Maureen Dowd highlights the maturity of the Bush White House in an anecdote drawn from Bob Woodward's new book State of Denial:
W. and Karl Rove "shared an array of fart jokes," Mr. Woodward writes. A White House aide put a toy that made a flatulence sound under Karl's chair for a morning meeting on July 7, 2005. When officials learned of the terrorist attacks in London that day, the prank was postponed. But several weeks later, "the device was placed under Rove's chair and activated during the senior staff meeting. Everyone laughed."
When a senior administration official said the White House was run by "kids on Big Wheels, who talk politics and know nothing," maybe he wasn't speaking metaphorically!
Correction 9:14 AM: Posting before my coffee kicks in is always a mistake. Per SomeCallMeTim's comment below, it was "a senior White House official" who gave the "Big Wheels" quote to Ron Suskind, not (necessarily) John DiIulio as this post previously stated.
I'm not sure that Dilulio was the source for the "kids on Big Wheels" quotation. It's not in the transcript of the letter in which he makes the "Mayberry Machiavellis" comment (linked at the Esquire page to which you've linked), and the Esquire page to which you've linked attributes it to "a current senior White House official."
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | September 30, 2006 at 08:50 AM
Leave it to you to highlight the least damning anecdote ever.
And to need a commenter to correct you--that's something else that can be left to you.
Posted by: | October 02, 2006 at 11:01 PM
Signed, me.
Not that I am somebody, but I don't roll 'nonymously yo.
Posted by: clarke | October 02, 2006 at 11:05 PM